Queen (Music) - TV Tropes 2009 - Live in Ukraine note The second of two live albums made with Paul Rodgers 2012 - Hungarian Rhapsody: Queen Live in Budapest '86 2014 - Queen: Live at the Rainbow '74 Non-album singles: 1974 - "Seven Seas of Rhye" note Otherwise available on their 1974 album Queen II with "See What a Fool I've Been" as the B-side. 1980 - "Play the Game" note Otherwise available on their 1980 album The Game with "A Human Body" as the B-side. 1981 - "Under Pressure" note Otherwise available on their 1982 album Hot Space. Also a collaboration with David Bowie with "Soul Brother" as the B-side. 1984 - "Radio Ga Ga" note Otherwise available on their 1984 album The Works with "I Go Crazy" as the B-side.

1984 - "Thank God It's Christmas" with "Man on the Prowl" as the first B-side note Otherwise available on their album The Works and "Keep Passing the Open Windows" as the second B-side note Otherwise available on The Works 1985 - "One Vision" note Otherwise available on their 1986 album A Kind of Magic with "Blurred Vision" as the B-side. 1986 - "A Kind of Magic" note Otherwise available on their album A Kind of Magic with "A Dozen Red Roses for My Darling" as the first B-side and "Gimme the Prize (Kurgan's Theme)" as the second B-side note Otherwise available on A Kind of Magic 1986 - "Who Wants to Live Forever" note Available on their 1986 album A Kind of Magic with "Killer Queen" as the first B-side note Otherwise available on their 1974 album Killer Queen and "Forever" as the second B-side. 1989 - "Breakthru" note Otherwise available on their album The Miracle with "Stealin'" as the B-side.

1989 - "The Invisible Man" note Otherwise available on The Miracle with "Hijack My Heart" as the B-side. 1991 - "I'm Going Slightly Mad" note Otherwise available on their 1991 album Innuendo with "Lost Opportunity" as the first B-side and "The Hitman" as the second B-side. note Otherwise available on their album Innuendo 1997 - "No-One But You (Only the Good Die Young)" with "Tie Your Mother Down" as a double A-side note Otherwise available on their 1976 album A Day at the Races and "We Will Rock You" and "Gimme the Prize (Kurgan's Theme)" as a double B-side. note Remixes otherwise not available elsewhere This band contains examples of: A Cappella : "We Will Rock You". The song is generally set in a cappella form, using only stomping and clapping as a rhythmic beat, except at the very end, which has a guitar solo.

Alternately, there is the lesser-known "fast" version, played in their live shows from the late 1970's to the early 1980's. Here's a BBC semi-live recording of said version . Achievements in Ignorance : Roger Taylor's a more instinctive musician, so he doesn't know and doesn't care about the names of some of the chords or harmonic functions, etc. When he composed "Radio Ga Ga", he used some chords that he was completely unfamiliar with, not knowing what they were actually called. He wrote that song on piano, knowing that it would encourage him to 'feel' his way and be more creative than if he played guitar. Freddie occasionally did the opposite; he mostly wrote on piano, but composed some songs on guitar. He felt it was a good process precisely because his limited guitar skills allowed him to write without over-thinking it. All Drummers Are Animals : Roger Taylor probably cultivated the hardest rocking image in the group. Ambiguously Brown : Freddie. His real name was Farrokh Bulsara, he was born in Zanzibar, East Africa to Parsi parents, and he went to boarding school in Bombay, India .

According to Wikipedia , he was named one of the 60 most influential Asian heroes of the last 60 years. Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking : The titular character from "The March of the Black Queen" is known to 'boil' (people), 'bake' (people) and to 'never dot her "i"s'. Badass Boast : In "Princes of the Universe", "Gimme the Prize", "We Are the Champions" (no time for losers), and "Seven Seas of Rhye". The lyrics also contain bits of A God Am I . Given that the first two are from Highlander this should not be surprising. "Khashoggi's Ship" also counts for the six of us who've heard it. Just partying with a famous arms dealer, gun-wielding giants be damned. The words "No Synthesizers", which appeared on every Queen album cover prior to 1980's "The Game", are a Badass Boast . And if you don't believe that, go listen to all of A Night at the Opera again. Badass Moustache : Freddie Mercury. As one November ad says, it turned Freddie from merely a queen to Queen!

Berserk Button : Brian and Roger's commentary for Queen Rock Montreal reveals that, at this point, Freddie was emphatically not pleased about making a concert film, didn't really get on with the director and thought the cameramen were getting in the way. Since the plan was to take footage from both nights' shows, he tried to make a mess of that by wearing trousers on one night and shorts on the second. Freddie also got really annoyed at one concert when fans showed up with banners that read "DISCO SUCKS" after the release of Hot Space. "It's only a bloody record, for Christ's sake, people get so excited." Roger, on the other hand, musically disliked the idea of steering Queen too far away from their rock roots into funk or techno-pop as they had by The '80s , though he still acquiesced in the end. Big "WHY?!" : "Under Pressure" features Freddie Mercury screaming the word "Why".

Bookends : "Tie Your Mother Down", the first song from A Day at the Races opens with a "White Man" foreshadowing that segues into an endless staircase-esque sound that goes right into the actual song and doesn't appear again until the very end of the album, serving as the coda for "Teo Torriate". "White Queen" from Queen II begins and ends the same way. This was most definitely intentionally done to mirror the song's thematic progression, with "As It Began" being the subtitle of the song. Their last album, Made in Heaven, begins and ends with "It's a Beautiful Day." On another level, as "Beautiful Day (Reprise)" heads for the close, samples from "Seven Seas of Rhye," the final song on their first album, are mixed in to the track. The band's line-up: It started with May and Taylor playing together in Smile, and now they are the only ones left performing. Boring but Practical : Brian May's method for supplying the harp parts on "Love of My Life". Since he couldn't actually play the instrument, he recorded each note separately and edited them together to get the chord sequences he wanted.

Break Up Song : "Save Me", "Need Your Loving Tonight", "It's a Hard Life", and probably some others. Brilliant, but Lazy : Freddie went through this phase for some albums and his solo effort Mr Bad Guy. Some of his songs would be originated by asking the producer or engineer to generate a drum beat and then he'd just ad-lib and go out expecting the others to finish off the work for him. During most of his career he averted this by being a very professional workaholic, both in the '70s and in the last years of his life. British Rockstar : Oh, you better believe it. Broken Aesop : "Radio Ga Ga" is all about how music video is ruining music and we should all just listen to the radio instead. The accompanying music video features lavish sets and costumes, footage from the film Metropolis and a montage of clips of music videos from earlier Queen songs. Continuity Nod : "Love of My Life" has "when I get older I will be there at your side to remind you how I still love you, I still love you".

Sixteen years later, "These Are the Days of Our Lives" (by a different songwriter) has an older (and dying) Freddie singing, "when I look, and I find, I still love you... I still love you." The video makes it all even more tearful, as it was Freddie's last. "Seaside Rendezvous" from A Night at the Opera has "I love you madly", while "Was It All Worth It" from The Miracle has "We love you madly". "Fat Bottomed Girls" and "Bicycle Race" (both released on one single) reference each other; "Bicycle Race" features "Fat-bottomed girls will be riding today" and "Fat Bottomed Girls" has "Get on your bikes and ride!" One of the album tracks from Jazz ("Let Me Entertain You") includes the lyric "We'll breakfast at Tiffany's / We'll sing to you in Japanese" as a reference to the song "Teo Toriatte" from A Day at the Races (which had a chorus sung in phonetic Japanese).

The symmetrical group image featured in the cover of Queen II (and on the profile pic) was frequently used in videos, including "Bohemian Rhapsody" and an updated one in "One Vision". "A Winter's Tale", one of the few songs from Made in Heaven recorded during the post-Innuendo sessions, has a subtle but charming one: "It's a kind of magic in the air". "It's a Beautiful Day" has a relatively big one that might have not even been intentional in that Freddie continuously chants "No One's Gonna Stop Me Now" throughout parts of the song, either a generic boast of his, or a fairly glaring reference to one of his songs that was (when "It's A Beautiful Day"'s vocals and piano were recorded) very recently released note "It's a Beautiful Day" was partially recorded in 1980, a mere year or so after the Jazz album was released .

"No-One But You (Only the Good Die Young)", being the reflective song that it is, also has several, namely the lines "Another tricky situation", "Forever paying every due" and "Now the party must be over", referencing "It's a Hard Life", "We Are the Champions", and "Party" / "Khashoggi's Ship", respectively. The clip to "Radio Ga Ga" features brief excerpts of several of their clips to earlier songs. "Soul Brother", an early '80s B-side, references "You're My Best Friend", "We Are the Champions", "We Will Rock You", "Flash", "Keep Yourself Alive", "Somebody to Love", itself and "Under Pressure" in its second verse. Cover Version : They never actually recorded any cover songs on their albums (except "God Save the Queen" at the end of Night at the Opera, guitar orchestrated by May, but they performed plenty of cover songs during live shows.

Examples include "Big Spender" at their early concerts, " Jailhouse Rock " on all their shows from 1973 until 1982 including the version on Queen Rock Montreal, and a medley of "Hello Mary Lou", " You're So Square ", " Tutti Frutti " and "Gimme Some Lovin'" on the Magic Tour of 1986. "Doin' All Right" is a song that was originally done by May's previous band Smile, so past member Tim Staffell also demanded royalties. Freddie's biggest solo hit, "The Great Pretender", is a cover of a song by The Platters. Dangerously Short Skirt : Freddie and Roger both wore one in the video for " I Want to Break Free". A Day in the Limelight : 1977-1982 concerts featured drummer Roger Taylor singing lead on one song, "I'm in Love with My Car", on which Freddie stuck to piano and backing vocals. Most of their albums had one song with Brian singing lead and one song with Roger singing lead.

Brian also occasionally played piano, such as on "Save Me" and "Teo Torriatte", while John Deacon played some guitar on "Another One Bites the Dust" and "Misfire". Less frequently but still, Roger would play guitar, bass and provide vocals in addition to drums. Roger singing lead vocals was particularly notable in that his performances of "I'm in Love with My Car" were the only instances where another band member sang lead vocals live before 1992. Freddie sang in Roger's place for "Modern Times Rock and Roll" and Brian's for "'39", as well as "Sleeping on the Sidewalk" (though it is debated if the latter was actually played live, as no bootleg recordings exist to verify it). Roger had a sort of I Am the Band moment with "Fight from the Inside", which was entirely recorded by himself on vocals, guitar, bass and drums. Some other of his compositions at that time were almost entirely recorded by him too (e.g. "Drowse" and "Sheer Heart Attack") , with minimal contributions by the other members (generally some guitar noises by Brian). Deadpan Snarker : Freddie.

Deliberate Monochrome : The "I'm Going Slightly Mad" and "These Are the Days of Our Lives" videos to cover up Freddie's ailing health. Determinator : In their commentaries for the music videos from The Miracle on the Greatest Video Hits II DVD, Roger Taylor and Brian May often comment on how Freddie Mercury put as much energy as he could into making the best possible videos in spite of how fragile his health had become by 1989. The story of how the vocals to "The Show Must Go On" (itself an example of the trope) were recorded is similarly famous: When Brian May presented the final demo to Mercury, he had doubts that Mercury would be physically capable of singing the song's highly demanding vocal line, due to the extent of his illness at the time. To May's surprise, when the time came to record the vocals, Mercury consumed a measure of vodka and said "I'll fucking do it, darling!", then proceeded to nail the vocal line in one take without problems. By the time Freddie recorded vocals for "Mother Love", his last studio recording before his death, he could no longer stand up on his own (and wasn't able to finish the recording).

Dirty Old Man : The title character in "Great King Rat" is described as one in the lyrics. Epic Rocking : Found mostly in their '70s material, particularly on their first two albums. Songs close to or exceeding six minutes in length include "Bohemian Rhapsody", "The Prophet's Song", "Liar", "March of the Black Queen", "Father to Son", "It's Late", "Innuendo", and that 22-minute ambiance at the end of "Made in Heaven" . Brian's first solo effort (1984's Star Fleet Project EP) was three songs of epic rocking, featuring contributions from Eddie Van Halen and an extended tribute to Eric Clapton . Every Episode Ending : Played with. A few (but not all) of the songs from A Night at the Opera have similar endings: The song will pretend to end , but then a heavily panned coda appears out of nowhere. At first, it sounds like it builds up to something, but nothing's really done with it. Fading into the Next Song : Used on several albums.

For example: The guitar at the end of "The Prophet's Song" fades into the introduction for "Love of My Life" on A Night at the Opera. Also, "Death on Two Legs" / "Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon" / "I'm in Love with My Car". Done twice consecutively on Sheer Heart Attack: "Tenement Funster", "Flick of the Wrist" and "Lily of the Valley" merge into one another seamlessly. "Procession", "Father to Son", and "White Queen (As It Began)" merge seamlessly into one another. "Ogre Battle" merges into "Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke", which then merges into "Nevermore". "The March of the Black Queen" merges into "Funny How Love Is". These were all on the same album, Queen II. First Girl Wins : When the band began, Freddie was dating a beautiful blonde English woman named Mary Austin. They moved in together for a while before breaking up in 1976. After that, Freddie dated many men and women, eventually being domestic partners with an Irish man, Jim Hutton.

When Freddie died, Mary received half of his fortune (the other half was split between his sister and his parents), including his mansion, his piano, and publishing royalties. Foreshadowing : The Miracle has the title song along with "Breakthru", both of which mention "All God's People" and "Headlong" in their lyrics, respectively note These are the titles of songs from the album that directly followed The Miracle, Innuendo. In the case of "Headlong", the lyrics in context are "rushing headlong", a phrase it shares with the "Headlong" song . The degree to which these were intentional is hard to say. Gadgeteer Genius : Brian May holds a PhD in Astrophysics. He designed and built his guitar, the Red Special, with his father in 1964. The guitar's neck is mostly a piece of wood salvaged from an old fireplace mantle-piece, and the tremolo bar is a motorcycle handbrake combined with a knitting needle. The guitar's body was made out of an old mahogany table that was going to be replaced anyway. John Deacon also tinkered with electronics in his youth and later graduated with a First in electrical engineering.

He joined in part because the others were impressed by his skill with equipment. He designed and built a guitar amplifier that Brian deemed good enough to use while recording. In fact, Brian May is about as close as you can get to being the Doctor in the flesh. Gag Boobs : Freddie, (in)famously in "I Want to Break Free". Genre Roulette : A typical Queen album from The '70s might contain elements of heavy metal, hard rock, progressive rock, music-hall numbers, Dixieland jazz, folk, blues-rock, Beatlesque pop-rock, glam-rock and ballads. Later albums would include funk, dance music, synth-pop, punk-rock, rockabilly, reggae and/or new wave influences. Freddie suggested that this was why it took so long (close to fifteen years after Queen began) for Roger and himself to put out the first Queen solo albums; the band was four solo projects that came together to create the Queen sound.

While all band-members shared an eclectic approach to song-writing and a tendency for experiments, generally speaking: Mercury was responsible for many of their ballads ("Love of My Life", "My Melancholy Blues"), pop songs and stylistic experiments ("Killer Queen", "Crazy Little Thing Called Love", "Bohemian Rhapsody", "Somebody to Love" etc.) If you're head-banging to an incredibly guitar-heavy Hard Rock tune it's probably been written by May ("Prophet's Song", "Tie Your Mother Down", "We Will Rock You"). May was responsible for his fair share of Tear Jerker ballads, too ("Save Me"; "All Dead, All Dead", "Who Wants to Live Forever") and acoustic folk — '30's jazz — or skiffle-influenced songs ("'39"; "Good Company"; "Dreamers' Ball"), often featuring ukulele-banjo. If the song is more old school rock-ish and its lyrics deal with things like rebellion, passion, living a life outside the rules etc., it was probably penned by Taylor ("Tenement Funster", "I'm in Love with My Car", "Sheer Heart Attack", "Fight from the Inside").

Somewhere in the early to mid '80s, Roger began composing pop songs with a heavier focus on synths ("Radio Ga Ga", "Breakthru"). The other band members have observed that Deacon was less influenced by bands like Led Zeppelin or The Who than the rest of them and had preferred Soul and American Funk music in his youth. As a result a lot of his songs have a kind of Motown pop style ("You're My Best Friend", "Misfire") or a funky, bass-driven sound ("Another One Bites the Dust", "I Want to Break Free"). He also wrote several ballads, including "Spread Your Wings", "You and I" and "Friends Will Be Friends" (the last one in collaboration with Freddie, with whom he also co-wrote "The Miracle"). Glam Rock : One of the longest lasting bands from this genre, bridging the gap between the artsy ( David Bowie and Roxy Music ) and heavy (Sweet, Slade) sides of the genre. God Save Us from the Queen! : The title character in "March of the Black Queen" is clearly not a nice lady.

Go Out with a Smile : "These Are the Days of Our Lives" was written and released shortly before Freddie Mercury's death. At the end of the music video (filmed in black and white to de-emphasise his frailty) Freddie looks directly at the camera and whispers 'I still love you', his last ever words on camera. The fans all knew he was saying goodbye, and we cried. At the very end of "Made in Heaven", after an eerie twenty-minute instrumental track — which some theorize is a soundscape representing the band's twenty years together — the absolute last thing you hear is Freddie Mercury camply quipping "Fab!" in approval. There's no denying that "The Show Must Go On" is this. "Was It All Worth It", from The Miracle, was written with this in mind. Come on, "Teo Torriatte" (Japanese), "Las Palabras de Amor" (Spanish), "Seaside Rendezvous" (French).

Rather lampshaded in "Let Me Entertain You": Just take a look at the menu We'll give you rock à la carte We'll breakfast at Tiffany's, we'll sing to you in Japanese We're only here to entertain you Gratuitous Panning : Most notable in "Bohemian Rhapsody" and "Killer Queen", but it happened all the time. Part of their unique production style, along with all the overdubbing. The middle choral section of "The Prophet's Song" uses this trope to make it easier to follow. Greatest Hits Album : The two main ones — Greatest Hits and Greatest Hits II — were released in 1981 and 1991, respectively, and collected the hit singles of the preceding decade. A third album, Greatest Hits III, is probably more aptly described as "Greatest Leftovers", consisting mainly of live Queen+ recordings and some remixes, although it does contain some good songs which were left out on I and II and needed to be included.

The US received the 1981 Greatest Hits (with a different track list), as well as both a modified version of Greatest Hits (red cover) and the US-only Classic Queen (with a blue cover similar to Greatest Hits II) in 1992. Classic was issued largely to capitalize on "Queen fever" brought on by Wayne's World (see above). Grief Song : One of the songs from Queen Rocks, "No-One But You", was written by the remaining members of Queen not only in mourning of Freddie, but as a general lament for public figures who suffered tragic deaths, spurred by the sudden passing of Princess Diana. Heavy Meta : Roger Taylor wrote quite a few songs about rock music. His very first composition for the group was "Modern Times Rock and Roll", after all. Heavy Mithril : Queen's first two albums are loaded with this. Most of them were penned by Freddie. He's Got Legs : As the "I Want To Break Free" video showed, Roger Taylor could sure rock a miniskirt... Hidden Depths : Brian May earned his PhD in astrophysics in 2007. High-Class Call Girl : "Killer Queen" is about one of these.

Freddie: It's about a high-class call girl. I'm trying to say that classy people can be whores, too. Homage : The video for "Radio Ga Ga" is a love letter to Metropolis . I Call It "Vera" : Brian May's guitar, the Red Special, which he built from scraps as a teenager. Also of note was the amp often used with the Red Special, the "Deacy Amp", built by Electrical Engineer turned Bassist, John Deacon. Iconic Item : Freddie's bottomless microphone stand; during a gig very early in the band's career, his mic stand snapped in half in the middle of a song, but he carried on with the intact bit and decided it would be more interesting to keep it like that. Brian May's Red Special guitar. Important Haircut : Freddie, Roger and John all had long hair in the 1970's, but then appeared with shorter hair around the time of News of the World, which represented new directions in the group's style. Freddie's famous mustache, which he grew around the time of The Game and the Flash Gordon soundtrack, also accompanied changes to Queen's sound.

Only Brian May has kept the same haircut (huge, dark, and curly) for the past 40 years; one of his conditions for Queen's inclusion in LEGO Rock Band was that they portray his hair accurately. Inspiration Nod : The band recorded Queen II in August 1973, shortly after Pink Floyd 's The Dark Side of the Moon was at the peak of its popularity. Both albums have a heartbeat fade-in on the opening track. Life is Real is Freddie's tribute to John Lennon, and includes the line "Lennon is a genius, living in every pore". Intercourse with You : Hey, guess what "Get Down, Make Love" is about. "Somebody to Love" is in the style of Aretha Franklin , of whom Freddie Mercury was a fan. "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" is in the style of Elvis Presley . "Innuendo" is in the style of Led Zeppelin , particularly paying homage to the eastern sty-lings of "Kashmir". Roger Taylor described it as Zeppelin meets Oscar Wilde; a "very English" track. "Life is Real" from the often-overlooked Hot Space is in the minimalist style of John Lennon.

"Another One Bites the Dust" was a disco song in the style of Chic ; depending on who you ask, it was either an homage or something that Deacon basically just lifted from them and made minor edits to. Ironic Echo : "Good Company", with the line "take care of those you call your own and keep good company". "Sleeping on the Sidewalk" also has this: "I may get hungry but I sure don't wanna go home [...] I don't get hungry and I sure don't wanna go home [...] I may get hungry and I sure do wanna go home". Ironic Nursery Tune : "Seven Seas of Rhye" is a surreal, apocalyptic A God Am I rant by Freddie Mercury including such lyrics as "I'll defy the laws of nature and come out alive / and then I'll get you." It ends by fading into a sample of the old music-hall tune "I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside".

"Great King Rat", a surreal song describing the less than savoury life of the title character, has a chorus based on "Old King Cole": "Great King Rat was a dirty old man and a dirty old man was he." I Thought It Meant : Here's a big one. The "no synthesizers" disclaimers that appeared on Queen's albums (until they started using synthesizers) weren't a sign of their hatred for synthesizers; the disclaimer was usually put at the end of the credits for each album. As one of Queen's former managers said, "We would spend four days multi-layering a guitar solo and then some imbecile from the record company would come in and say, 'I like that synth!'" Freddie adored cats. "Delilah" is titled after his favourite cat. "All Dead, All Dead" was written after the death of one of Brian May's cats. Long-Runner Lineup : Taken to its Logical Extreme : A Long Runner band (20 years) with only one line-up: Freddie Mercury, Brian May, John Deacon, and Roger Taylor note However, in the early, early days, they went through several bassists before they found John .

From 1984, Spike Edney was known as the unofficial fifth member of the band, playing keyboards and guitar on tours. He has also stayed around for their live collaborations into the 2010's. Since Mercury's death and Deacon's retirement, "Queen +" has had the line-up of May and Taylor + various musicians and vocalists. Long Song, Short Scene : Their version of "New York, New York", which can be heard in Highlander , never got a full version recording (they only recorded it partially, to match the scene it plays over: Kurgan's drive through New York). It's never been released, except as a snippet in the movie itself. Lost in Translation : The "I Want To Break Free" video was effectively lost in geographic translation. Virtually no one outside England knew what the hell they were looking at, as they would have been unfamiliar with Coronation Street. Lucky Charms Title : "Body Language ↑⬱". The arrows, which appear on the sleeves for both the song's single and the Hot Stuff album, as well as in the video for the song, were never explained by any member of Queen. Lyrical Cold Open : Many of their songs have this.

Some loudly announce themselves with an opening chorus ("Bohemian Rhapsody", "Fat Bottomed Girls", "Bicycle Race", "It's a Hard Life", "I Want It All") while others open with a quiet fade in of Freddie's vocals ("We Are the Champions", "Save Me", "Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy"). "Somebody to Love" does a bit of both ("Can... Any-bo-dyyyy..."). In the remix of "Under Pressure" featured in Greatest Hits III, you have Mercury sing / speaking "You say New York is dangerous, even though they say it's not this way" then Bowie going "Even the blind man can see it's not so...", before there's a sudden percussion, and the scream, "RAGE!!!!!!", where a very up-tempo version of the song begins. Lyrical Dissonance : Quite a few songs. "Don't Try Suicide", which is about suicide note while it's nice that Queen are, in fact, not in favour of suicide, the text really sucks as an anti-suicide message, being flippant and dismissive rather than empathetic and supportive but sounds like a reject from West Side Story .

"'39" is a happy, upbeat skiffle song, with lyrics about a space voyage for one year, but due to the time dilation effect, one hundred years have passed, and everyone the protagonist loves is now dead. "Tie Your Mother Down": Frustrated lyrics advocating extreme measures to avoid family interference with a date, sung in big massed choruses to an incredibly upbeat guitar riff. Then there's "Who Needs You" which is about breaking up with someone who is a 'spoilt thing", with a catchy, upbeat tune. "Put Out the Fire", a cheery pop-rock tune... And the lyrics are told from the perspective of a man who used his gun against everyone he had a problem with, including his unfaithful lover and his neighbor she was having an affair with, and an allusion to the murder of John Lennon. "Under Pressure" is an incredibly upbeat and cheery song with lyrics such as "It's the terror of knowing what this world is about / Watching some good friends scream 'let me out'". "One Vision" is an upbeat, inspirational song mostly about Martin Luther King, Jr . It was covered by Laibach , who rendered it as a German-language faux-Nazi song .

Critics at the time had sometimes equated Queen with fascism, due to the hold Freddie had over the audience coming as one and the critics' dismissal of the kind of arena rock Queen did so well. On the opposite end of the spectrum (Angry song with light lyrics), "Dead on Time" is a driving, pulse-pounding, heavy piece... About how rushing around all the time isn't that great and you should take it easy. Mind Screw : Applies to a lot of their work, with "Bohemian Rhapsody" being the defining example. However, since the very moment people could analyse it, many have claimed to "get" it, even if Freddie himself has said that the song has no real personal meaning. "'39" does make sense, but seems not to. It helps to know the back story. Seriously. Best song about theoretical Einsteinian space travel induced time dilation masquerading as a sea shanty EVER .

1: "Is This the World We Created?", "Love Of My Life", "You Take My Breath Away" 2: "Crazy Little Thing Called Love", "Killer Queen", "You're My Best Friend" 3: "I Want to Break Free", "Radio Gaga", "Save Me" 4: "Bohemian Rhapsody", "Another One Bites The Dust", "Hammer To Fall" 5: "Now I'm Here", "Ogre Battle", "Fat Bottomed Girls" 6: "Dead On Time", "The Hitman", "Gimmie The Prize" 7: "Son And Daughter", "Modern Times Rock N Roll", "Stone Cold Crazy" Mondegreen : "Mama, just killed a man" from "Bohemian Rhapsody" is sometimes heard as "Mama just killed a man" (as in the mother killed someone and not the protagonist). "Bismil'lah" ( Arabic for "by the grace of God") is often misheard as "Miss Miller" or even "Max Miller". "The algebra is the devil put aside for me", or some variation thereof, is another common one.

"He used to be a man with a stick in his hand" from "Headlong" may be misheard as "He used to be a man with his dick in his hand". Mood Whiplash : The first three tracks of A Night at the Opera. "Death On Two Legs" is a harsh, acerbic 'fuck you' of a song, that abruptly shifts into a tinkly piano solo and Freddie's twee lyrics of "Lazing On a Sunday Afternoon", which itself shifts into the slow, hard, rock ballad "I'm In Love With My Car". Without a single pause. Mundane Made Awesome : Queen and only Queen could write a song about something mundane as riding a bike and make it ridiculously epic. "Delilah" is an ode to one of Freddie's cats, who "make[s] [Freddie] slightly mad" when she "pee[s] all over [his] Chippendale Suite". The Musical : We Will Rock You , which is surprisingly good for a jukebox musical. It helps to have Queen music. Nice Guy : Pretty much all of them, as revealed in interviews and anecdotes surrounding the band.

Non-Appearing Title : "Bohemian Rhapsody", "Brighton Rock", "Tenement Funster", "The Prophet's Song", "The Millionaire Waltz". No Ending : "Sheer Heart Attack" from News Of The World kind of just...stops. Not to the effect of the band just abruptly stopping, but...imagine if you were listening to the song and someone came over and turned off the device that was playing it immediately after the chorus. To an extent, "Tenement Funster". The song builds up to something akin to a Grand Finale near the end, but when it actually happens, the song technically just segues into "Flick Of The Wrist". Even on most versions of Queen's First EP (which also has the song), the song fades out during the transition without a proper ending. Of course, many people argue that the song's ending can be heard beneath said transition, but it's still jarring nonetheless. Non-Indicative Name : Jazz. The songs on the album draw from a variety of musical styles, like most Queen albums, but there's nothing on it even remotely resembling jazz.

Precision F-Strike : "Don't Try Suicide" has "nobody gives a damn" in the chorus. See also Determinator above. "Son and Daughter" features the line "The world expects a man to buckle down and shovel shit". The word was never uttered in live versions; they truncated the sentence at "shovel" or said "it" instead. Product Placement : An accidental one. "Killer Queen" opens with the line "she keeps Moët & Chandon in her pretty cabinet", which was a mere comment on how classy the fictional girl was. The winery benefited when the song became a big hit, and as a reward, they sent the band and producer vats of champagne as well as passes for Wimbledon and Grand Prix. Protest Song : "I Want It All" was interpreted both as an anti-apartheid song and as an LBGT anthem, though neither of those meanings were intended by the band. The anti-apartheid interpretation is rather ironic in that Queen was one of the few major groups not to abide with the UN cultural boycott on apartheid South Africa, and they ended up fined and blacklisted.

Queen members later argued that they weren't a political group and that the crowd was integrated, missing the point on the policy of de-investment. "I Want To Break Free" was also adopted as an LGBT anthem. In contrast, audiences in South Africa and South America appreciated it as an anthem against oppression. "Hammer to Fall" describes the futility of war in the face of our ultimate mortality. It was interpreted by some as a Cold War protest song, though Brian May has vocally denied this. "Radio Ga Ga" can be seen as a direct rebuttal to "Video Killed the Radio Star", calling for radio to stay viable in the face of MTV (which, in 1982, was nothing more than a visual radio station). The updated version used in the play We Will Rock You directly attacks the mass-produced, digital pop that appeared in the 2000's. The Quiet One : John Deacon, almost literally; he was the only member who didn't sing, and said very little in group interviews, generally only speaking when a question was directed specifically to him.

Since the band went their separate ways in 1991, John mostly retired from the music industry, only going back into the studio to record the "No-One But You (Only the Good Die Young)" single. He was later presumably okay with Queen + Paul Rodgersnote once May and Taylor managed to convince him that they weren't replacing Mercury, something of a Berserk Button for him, but declined to take part. Reality Is Unrealistic : Double-subversion regarding their whole 'no synths' thing: When they were recording their first single, Brian added some guitar effects via multi-tracking, varispeed, pedals and an amplifier John built. Some people in the record company and the press thought they'd used a Moog synthesiser instead, and the whole 'no synths' claim was born. As it's entered cultural osmosis (especially amongst Queen fans), a lot of people have gone to the other extreme: they think every single effect on Queen records was made by Brian's guitar.

Of course, sometimes that was the case (e.g., the 'shivers down my spine' bit on "Bohemian Rhapsody", done with harmonics and EQ), but sometimes the effect was something else (e.g., prepared piano on "Nevermore"), and sometimes it was indeed a synth (e.g., near the break of "Coming Soon"). "Another One Bites the Dust" takes it up to eleven, as it's got many sound effects throughout, some of which are indeed the Red Special (with pedals and EQ and stuff), some of which are synths (reversed) and some of which are neither (reversed piano, e-drums). From Hot Space onwards, the band started to programme drum machines, which sometimes would complement Roger's playing (e.g., "Dancer") and sometimes would replace him completely (e.g., "Body Language"). That creates a lot of confusion, even today, as sometimes Roger did play the part on an actual drum set but because of his precision and because of the mix (not as 'in your face' as in the 70's), people believe it's a machine.

People not familiar with Queen tend to think they had a female backing vocalist on some songs such as "Bohemian Rhapsody" and "Somebody to Love", when actually it was just them singing falsetto (usually Roger Taylor, sometimes Freddie Mercury and very occasionally Brian May). Doubly subverted on "Let Me Live", where they did hire female backing vocalists. Retcon : Everybody knows Brian made his guitar with his father and he calls it the Red Special, right? The story wasn't always told like that: in the early days, not a single mention of May Sr's contribution was made—perhaps the band's publicists thought it was more impressive to just credit Brian for it; it was more "rock and roll" that way—and the nickname "Red Special" only showed up much, much later in the story. It might have been originated by either the press or the fandom, although now Brian uses it as well. Roaring Rampage of Revenge : "Another One Bites the Dust" is about a man who goes on a killing spree shooting the people who had screwed him over. Rule of Cool : During the video for "Princes of the Universe", Connor MacLeod from Highlander challenges Freddie Mercury to a sword fight.

The duel ends in a DRAW. Think about that for a second... and Freddie's fighting with his microphone stand. Sanity Slippage Song : "I'm Going Slightly Mad". Also, the traditional song "Oh, I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside" which plays at the end of "Seven Seas of Rhye". Self-Backing Vocalist : Their trademark was to massively overdub their vocals to create a choral effect. Depending on the song, they could have only Freddie ("Love of My Life"), only Brian ("Leaving Home Ain't Easy"), only Roger ("Tenement Funster"), Freddie + Brian ("All Dead, All Dead"), Freddie + Roger ("Rock It"), or all three of them, as in the majority of their work. Sometimes they even sang each part (alto, tenor, baritone) together in order to make the resulting bounced sound really big. Self-Deprecation : They all played other instruments besides their main one, but were usually more than modest about it.

Freddie often half-joked on stage that he could only play three chords on guitar; Brian called his own piano skills "sub-par"; Roger (in the '80s) said his voice was getting worse with every passing day; John was often shy about his own abilities on other instruments or when it came to song-writing (lyrics in particular, Freddie too) and said he never sang on any albums because he felt he couldn't compete vocally with the other three. Freddie famously replied to a question about how he functioned as an artist with "I'm not an artist, I'm just a musical prostitute, my dear". '70s Hair : Brian May has kept his for more than forty years. Shirtless Scene : Freddie had a few in concerts. Roger too in the encores at early gigs, like the Rainbow in November 1974 and the Hammersmith Odeon in December 1975. To the Marx Brothers , the albums A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races taking their names from two of their films. The music video for "Calling All Girls" was based upon the George Lucas movie THX 1138 .

The music video for "Radio Ga Ga" was based upon and featured actual footage from the Fritz Lang classic Metropolis , which Freddie supplied a song for in a modern overdub. The "The Works" tour's stage setup was also based on the same film, with a cityscape in the background and large gears. The lyrics to the song also specifically mention Orson Welles ' infamous The War of the Worlds broadcast. "Bring Back That Leroy Brown" (from Sheer Heart Attack) is a homage to Jim Croce, who had died the previous year. "Let Me Entertain You" specifically mentions Elektra and EMI, Queen's then-record labels in America and Europe, respectively. The "I Want To Break Free" video is a parody of Coronation Street , with Brian and John's outfits in particular inspired by the "Pepperpots" of Monty Python's Flying Circus . Freddie himself pays Homage to ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev - even shaving his iconic mustache to play him! Then both Coronation Street and EastEnders repaid the favor separately by their characters dressing as Queen and singing the song themselves.

The lyrics of "Innuendo" (which were started by Freddie, but were mostly Roger's work) are intended as a shout-out to " Kashmir ". "Life Is Real (Song For Lennon )". The song "Dragon Attack" from 1980 mentions their chief engineer (later promoted to producer) Mack. Around the mid-80s, John Deacon lost his license for a year because of a DUI. Roger Taylor referenced that in his song "Don't Lose Your Head". Another Deacon-related one: he once went AWOL during some recording sessions, leaving just a note on his bass saying "gone to Bali", which shocked and upset the rest of the band. The line "we went to Bali" was incorporated into "Was It All Worth It", which Freddie thought at the time would be his swan song (he didn't think he'd live long enough for another album). Siamese Twin Songs : "We Will Rock You" and "We Are the Champions". Sixth Ranger : Spike Edney was the band's touring keyboardist in the 1980's (when Freddie decided he wanted to spend more time moving about and interacting with the audience) and also provided additional guitars and backing vocals.

He was sometimes referred to as the band's fifth member, and has since played with Brian and Roger in the solo projects as well as with Queen+Paul Rodgers. Solo Side Project : Every main member of Queen bar John Deacon released solo albums while an active member of the band. Freddie Mercury, for instance, released two solo albums while still part of Queen, namely Mr. Bad Guy and Barcelona in collaboration with opera singer Montserrat Caballé. Song Style Shift : "Bohemian Rhapsody" is a famous example of this, but this is found in several of their earlier more progressive songs. For example, "The Prophet's Song" is a hard rock song with an extended a capella section in the middle, where Freddie goes crazy with the studio overdubs. Sophisticated as Hell : Despite Freddie's elegant, dandyish persona, he loved to drop f-bombs, both on and off-stage. Soprano and Gravel : Done occasionally, especially with their more operatic songs like "Bohemian Rhapsody" and "Seven Seas Of Rhye", with Freddie alternating between a harsh, growling tenor and a clean, piercing falsetto.

Within the band itself, in contrast to Freddie and Brian, Roger frequently deployed a much harsher, snarlier voice, closer to really angry Roger Waters ("Fight From The Inside" is clear proof of this, or "Fun It"—it's really easy to tell Freddie and Roger apart there). Spiritual Successor : Freddie Mercury wrote "It's A Hard Life" as a direct sequel to "Play The Game". "Somebody To Love" is a sweeping rock opera to follow "Bohemian Rhapsody". The album Hot Space was meant to be a spiritual successor to the massive success of the Funk-influenced "Another One Bites The Dust", although its success was limited. The opening lines of "It's A Hard Life" share a significant snippet of melody with "Vesti la Giubba" from Leoncavallo's Pagliacci . More notably, the entirety of A Day At The Races can be thought of as a "sequel" to A Night At The Opera. They're both named after Marx Brothers films, the album art is almost exactly the same with a black background rather than white, and many of the songs parallel each other.

"Bohemian Rhapsody" and "Somebody to Love" ornote arguably "Teo Torriate", "'39" and "Long Away", "The Prophet's Song" and "White Man", "You're My Best Friend" and "You and I", and very specifically, both albums open with Epic Riff -driven Hard Rock tunes ("Death on Two Legs [Dedicated to...]" and "Tie Your Mother Down"). Additionally, "In The Lap Of The Gods", "My Fairy King", "Liar", and "March Of The Black Queen" could all be seen as predecessors to "Bohemian Rhapsody". Though they're written by and partially sung by different members, "Fun It" and "Another One Bites The Dust" have similarities. The drum intros especially sound similar. Although it may not seem like it at first, Queen II and Jazz actually have quite a bit in common.

They both have album artwork that is primarily in black and white; they're both very heavy, Up to Eleven albums compared to the band's other work; and a lot of techniques used on Queen II were reused on Jazz (namely, the sitar-like sound created by sticking piano wire under the guitar frets and a multi-tracked guitar that emulates the sound of a string section). Finally, you can draw a number of parallels between the songs on both albums; "Mustapha" almost sounds like Freddie trying to recreate "The Fairy Feller's Masterstroke" with a more effective "punch" to the listener. Stage Names : Freddie Mercury was born Farrokh Bulsara. Step Up to the Microphone : While most people simply think of Freddie as the lead singer, most Queen albums have songs where Brian and Roger take the vocal lead as well. Only John, who hated his voice, never did. Stop and Go : "Ogre Battle" uses it rather subtly to add some weight to the "He gives a great big cry..." verse.

The break is even longer in live performances of the song, with Freddie often stopping to ask the audience "[what they] think of the show so far", a reference to Morecambe and Wise . They did a similar thing in live versions of "Son and Daughter", with the a capella "I want you" followed by a pause and Freddie asking the audience what comes next. A Storm Is Coming : "The Prophet's Song", based on the Biblical story of Noah. Take That : "Scandal" is a take that against the celebrity-obsessed media, who were giving both Freddie (over his health problems, resulting in a picture of him looking haggard and emaciated on the front page of The Sun) and Brian (over his divorce and subsequent marriage to actress Anita Dobson ) a hard time in the late eighties. "We Are the Champions" was described by Freddie as being a "take that" directed to the music press, which almost always gave the band horrendous reviews (ex: Rolling Stone describing Queen as "the first fascist rock band" etc) yet they continued to be one of the world's most popular and best selling bands.

When the rest of the band heard Freddie do the first run-through of the song, they "fell out laughing", knowing exactly whom he was slagging. And then there's "Death On Two Legs (Dedicated to...)", a SCATHING attack on their former manager Norman Sheffield. On the Live Killers version, Freddie ramped it up a bit more by saying it was dedicated to "a motherfucker of a gentleman". "Flick of the Wrist", from the preceding album is written along the same lines, and reputedly directed at the same motherfucker . It's a full-blown Reason You Suck Song . "Fight from the Inside" and "Sheer Heart Attack" (both written by Roger) are Take Thats at the then-emerging punk scene. Word Salad Lyrics : Freddie once openly admitted that "Bohemian Rhapsody"'s lyrics have no real meaning to them. "Another One Bites the Dust". Originally, John Deacon wanted to write a song about cowboys, but he ended up rewriting the words enough that they didn't really mean anything in the end. "Killer Queen": "Dynamite with a laser beam". It doesn't even make any sense in context!

But it is guaranteed to blow your mind . "Let Me Entertain You" has a dandy; "I'll Cruella de Vil you..." Wrestling Doesn't Pay : It actually took them longer than one would think to start making money from music. Even when their albums really began to sell well, they were being paid £60 a week (not bad in 1973) but, at the same time, were stuck in a pretty bad management contract, which resulted in them owing their ex-manager Norman Sheffield (the "motherfucker of a gentleman" targeted by the song "Death on Two Legs") something like £200,000. You Are the New Trend : Freddie's look throughout the '80s became the stereotypical look for gays, especially the slicked / coiffed hair, moustache, and hairy chest.

Question: 'Killer Queen' is a villainess in which musical?
Answer: 'WE WILL ROCK YOU'